The other day I was starting up Norton Ghost to recover an old ghost image and setup a clean machine. I went through the menus as I usually do on autopilot, source, destination, etc…

Surprisingly, right before it started “doing it’s thing” I got the error message: “the destination disk could not be locked (643)”, I was baffled at first as I never encountered this error. Going back and trying again I noticed what happened. As I picked the destination disk, I used the wrong disk and marked one of the active disks instead of the clean one. Obviously the destination could not be used.

Why am I writing this useless piece of information??? You know who, knows exactly

peace to you all

Many developers for Vista noticed all the new issues with editing and/or deleting registry keys. The new security measures turned the whole registry model to a major pain for developers.

A first step to some would be to check if the key is WRP Protected or not. To do that do the following:
Right click on the key -> Click Permissions -> Full Control would be only for TrustedInstaller (users/groupname tab) then the key is WRP. This means only Trusted Installers get to make changes to the key.

Trusted Installer is a service that hosts code for install, update, and un-install of OS components. The service is trusted by the system to check for all the prerequisites such as package authenticity, signing authority and dependencies before making system changes.

This may be funny or this may be sad, but this is the state of speech recognition in Windows Vista.

Speech recognition was never perfect, some products are better than others. While some fail miserably others can definitely do a good job with proper training. Microsoft’s integrated speech recognition in Vista is no jewel, it has a proper interface and correction options, soon you will understand why they are required.

Be aware! Some adult language… but I was holding my stomach laughing at some parts.

According to a recent study, 94 percent of business PCs in North America do not meet the minimum requirements for Vista. Beside the fact that Microsoft tend to underestimate the real requirements of it’s systems upon release in published statements, the picture is pretty gloomy.

About half of the average business PCs in North America are unable to meet the minimum requirements for Microsoft’s Windows Vista operating system, while 94 percent do not meet the system requirements for Vista Premium.

Within these figures, 41 percent and 78 percent, respectively, require RAM upgrades to meet the minimum and premium system requirements of Vista, says a new study by Softchoice Corp., which is expected to be released later this week.

In comparison, when Windows XP was released, some 71 percent of the PCs met its system requirements, Softchoice services consultant Dean Williams said in an executive summary of the report.

Read more.

When a file is deleted from your computer, its contents aren’t immediately destroyed. Its hard drive space is made available for use, but until that space is overwritten, your old data is usually intact. Restoration by Brian Kato recovers such files on either FAT or NTFS partitions.

Restoration is a freeware program that restores deleted files no longer in the Recycle Bin. Restoration works on Windows 9x 2000, NT and XP — on the Fat and NTFS file systems. It’s only 406 KB in size (and the 193 KB on the Windows 2000/XP version).

Generally, the sooner you try to restore a file, the more successful you’ll be, since the more time passed since it’s been deleted it’s more likely to have been overwritten, this is especially critical on systems with low available disk space. Even if a file seems to be restored, there is no guarantee that the content is correct, check the files after you run the program.

Download link 1 (best) – Download link 2 (good) – Download link 2 (less).

Feel like trying out Windows Vista? Windows Vista Release Candidate 1 is ready for public testing. Grab it and test it for yourself.

At first is seemed like yet another blooper hits a big company. Microsoft Canada supposedly accidentally released Windows Vista pricing on Microsoft’s Canadian website. When the mistake was “found” the listings were remove promptly.
Here are the prices as presented on the Canadian site (in US$):

Vista Ultimate
Upgrade: $269.931
Full Retail: $450.581

Vista Home Premium
Upgrade: $179.691
Full Retail: $269.931

Vista Home Basic
Upgrade: $116.483
Full Retail: $233.862

Vista Business
Upgrade: $224.832
Full Retail: $342.215

However, all products and prices are already on Amazon. Kind of putting a dent in the leakage strategy, don’t you think?

Shutdown Event Tracker provides a way for System Administrators and IT professionals to track and log why a servers are being restarted or shut down. It gathers the reasons users/administrators give for restarts and shutdowns to help create a comprehensive picture of an organization’s system environment.

The whole idea behind the shutdown event tracker is that a server isn’t meant to be restarted or shutdown regularly. Therefore, when it is, administrators should keep a log of why the machine was powered down. However this feature is not suitable to all server mainly those who are restarted remotely without using the windows interface.

Shutdown Event Tracker is enabled by default and supported on all Windows Server 2003 family of operating systems.

To disable Shutdown Event Tracker perform the following:

1. Log in as administrator
2. Run gpedit.msc (group policy manager) in command prompt
3. Go to Computer Configuration –> Administrative Templates –> System
4. Double-click Display shutdown event tracker
5. Change to Disable.
6. Will take effect after reboot. If you want the changes to take affect immediately with a restart, refresh the GPO by running the following command: gpupdate /force

This is a very short Tripwire Cheatsheet with all common commands and maintainance action. No explanations or information on the command rundown. If anything is missing let me know.

Install the Tripwire RPM

Check if Tripwire already installed:

rpm -q tripwire

Install from RPM:

rpm -Uvh /mnt/cdrom/RedHat/RPMS/tripwire*.rpm

Configure Tripewire by editing the twcfg.txt file

vi /etc/tripwire/twcfg.txt

Run the install Script

/etc/tripwire/twinstall.sh

Initialize the Tripwire Database

/usr/sbin/tripwire --init

Running an Integrity Check

/usr/sbin/tripwire --check

Viewing & Examining Tripwire Reports

/usr/sbin/twprint -m r --twrfile /var/lib/tripwire/report/<name>.twr

Replace <name>.twr with the name of the report file.

View Tripwire Databases

/usr/sbin/twprint -m d --print-dbfile | less

Updating the Tripwire Database

/usr/sbin/tripwire --update --twrfile /var/lib/tripwire/report/<name>.twr

Replace <name>.twr with the name of the report file.

Updating the Tripwire Policy File
Export profile file from DB:

twadmin --print-polfile > /etc/tripwire/twpol.txt

Edit file:

vi /etc/tripwire/twpol.txt

Update policy file:

/usr/sbin/twadmin --create-polfile -S site.key /etc/tripwire/twpol.txt

Delete DB file:

rm /var/lib/tripwire/<name>.twd

Replace <name>.twd with the name of DB file.
Initialize the Tripwire Database

/usr/sbin/tripwire --init

Updating the Tripwire Configuration File
Export configuration file from DB:

twadmin --print-cfgfile > /etc/tripwire/twcfg.txt

Edit file:

vi /etc/tripwire/twcfg.txt

Regenerate a configuration file:

/usr/sbin/twadmin --create-cfgfile -S site.key /etc/tripwire/twcfg.txt

Sending Test Email Messages:

/usr/sbin/tripwire --test --email your@email.address

Tripwire File Locations
Executables:
/usr/sbin/tripwire
/usr/sbin/twadmin
/usr/sbin/twprint
Configuration files:
/etc/tripwire/twinstall.sh
/etc/tripwire/twcfg.txt
/etc/tripwire/tw.cfg
/etc/tripwire/twpol.txt
/etc/tripwire/tw.pol
/etc/tripwire/<name>.key
/var/lib/tripwire/<host_name>.twd
Reports:
/var/lib/tripwire/report/<reports_name>.twr

Last Thursday Microsoft published the minimum hardware requirements for Windows Vista. I was getting the feeling Vista’s specs skyrocketed out of proportion. Previous system requirements for Microsoft systems were usually above market level, and this was the base for the Wintel alliance, but this time it seems a little too much. I went around digging for the system requirements for all (not so recent) Microsoft systems. I was not surprised that this info was not to be found anywhere in the vast MSDN and TechNet networks.

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